Riyadh: Sa'ad Mohammad Al Shahri, a suspected terrorist and associate of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was killed in a US air strike a few days ago in Afghanistan, security sources have said.
Gulf News has learnt that Al Shahri was an active Al Qaida militant who featured on a list of wanted terrorists that was issued by the Saudi Interior Ministry on June 28, 2006.
Al Shahri, of the Bani Jubairi clan in the Namas governorate, south of Saudi Arabia, was 31 years old.
He is widely believed to have trained young militants in Afghanistan and was an associate of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hizb e Islami party.
Expressing his strong disapproval of Al Shahri's activities, retired Colonel Mohammad Mubarak Al Jubairi Al Shahri, his father, said his son had run away to Afghanistan which was then under Russian occupation, when he was just 15-years-old.
"After the Russian war in Afghanistan Sa'ad returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was showing some symptoms of mental disease," retd Col Al Shahri said.
"During his stay of seven years in the Kingdom, he... married and had two children. He later left his family and went again to Afghanistan without telling anyone."
Al Shahri's death was confirmed on an Al Qaida website. His family were informed by phone by an unidentified source.
"I received a call from an unidentified source telling me about my son Sa'ad's death in an air strike. He has been in Afghanistan for a long time. He has five sons, three of them were born to a foreign wife in Afghanistan," London-based Al Hayat newspaper quoted his mother as saying.
